Essays on Economic Stability and Growth

"The essays brought together in this volume have one common
feature. They are the product of intellectual revolution set in
train by the publication of J. M. Keynes’ General Theory of Em-
ployment^ Interest and Money in 1936. In retrospect, the revolutionary
impact of that book lay not so much in its policy implications as
in its success in forging a new instrument of thought. It provided
a new way of approaching the economic problem — ^focussing
attention on the relationships between a limited number of
strategic aggregates — ^which proved extraordinarily potent in
stimulating further speculation along paths that have brought
economists progressively closer to understanding how capitalist
economies work.
Ideas are like living organisms: while they are alive they
gradually but inevitably change shape, colour or structure —
there can never be any finality about them. When they become
frozen and attain the status of a rigid doctrine it is a sure sign that
their force is spent. Creative insight cannot survive the icy touch
of established orthodoxy."
Nicholas Kaldor